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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27969449">The Pocket Labyrinth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie'>innie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Hating Game - Sally Thorne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:28:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,081</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27969449</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>How about an AU in which Lucy and Josh end up living together after working together for only a month?  (These two have nothing but good ideas!)  Here's a look at the first few days of their domestic bliss.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lucy Hutton/Joshua Templeman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>75</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Pocket Labyrinth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithers/gifts">blithers</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>htbthomas is an incredible beta, and you should all be jealous she's on my team.</p><p>Title from Kathleen Pierce's "Joy":<br/>We regretted the way to joy had been a labyrinth<br/>of our making, where from interiors we'd made our way<br/>further inside toward endings we could recognize<br/>and turn back from. We'd invented the pocket labyrinth . . .</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>My new roommate has insane eyes.  </p><p>I am thirty-one years old and do not need a roommate.  I particularly do not need a roommate who apparently thinks cleanliness is achieved by invisible fairies and is also a legitimate nutjob.  And I saw the depths of her insanity pretty much the moment I met her — okay, a few minutes later than that, when I was just starting to recover from the best smile I'd ever seen, this glorious all-lit-up beam that she let fly like she had no idea she was waving a red flag in front of a bull — so I can't say I wasn't warned.</p><p>It's a hell of a thing, when the libido you've spent your life denying teams up with your brain and they take turns being dirty, dirty enablers for each other, one tagging in when the other one's flagging.  I want Lucinda, from her tiny painted toenails to the top of her haphazard pile of luxurious curls.  And I've got her now, here in my space, only she keeps thinking I'm playing a game — WHAT GAME COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE, LUCINDA? I want to yell, preferably directly into her mouth — and that I've now tilted the board so sharply in my favor that it will take a Hail Mary for her to triumph.  Which means that my apartment, which was, just last week, my cool, clean haven, my personal confessional, and my blue-painted home base, is now the site of my current and future agony.  It's a hell of a thing, to realize getting exactly what you wanted means you've brought hell down upon your own unsuspecting head.</p><p>*</p><p>My mother's call on Sunday morning is a sharp reminder of how my life has changed since Friday afternoon.  She's already worried about me since Mindy walked out of my life ten days ago — more worried than the end of a dead-end relationship warrants, honestly — so if I don't pick up she'll get more and more anxious and that glow she's always had about her will fade and that, too, will be all my fault.</p><p>I get my hand on the phone and try to will Lucinda into silence.  What is she even doing?  Surely nothing that requires a constant running commentary, unless she knows how irritating I find one-sided conversations; I am constitutionally unable to not respond.  She is unboxing her weird little Smurf collection, the one that was on her work desk the first day and mysteriously gone by the time I returned from the gym that afternoon.  She's fussing over their arrangement as if each one is fitted with a tiny nannycam, the better to capture my spectacular implosion at this twee desecration of my apartment.  Just as Lucy finds a Smurf keychain and sets it on the counter between us with a hopeful smile, I pick up the phone.</p><p>"Hi," I say, and Lucy's face goes <i>intensely</i> curious.  Everything about her is intense, from how very small she is, to how bright her smile is, to how insistently her eyes glitter when she looks at me.  I want to eat her up, just hold her up and consume every last bit of her and lick my fingers after.  </p><p>My mother sounds uncharacteristically jumpy, almost stuttering out her inquiries as to how I'm doing, how I'm eating, if I'm spending enough time away from the office.  I cannot catch any incriminating sounds, but I wonder if my father is just sitting there, deliberately in her line of sight, judging her with the coldest eyes in the universe for wasting even a crumb of love or concern on the kid who's never counted for much.  I don't want her to catch it coming and going, so I put on a hearty voice and tell her things are going really well at work, post-merger and post-reorganization, and that I've come up with a recipe for tomato sauce so thick with onions and herbs that cheese and cream become irrelevant.  Lucinda's head whips up and around — is she trying to see <i>through</i> the fridge door — so fast that one long curl falls from its pin and trails behind her like a pennant, and I want to watch her all the time, to catch every single response to every single action of mine.  It is addictive.  <i>She</i> is addictive.</p><p>I hear my mother's sigh and then her words.  "A small treat is good for you, Josh."  There's silence while she waits for me to get as close as I can to agreeing with her, <i>a treat every thousand days is not bad</i>, and then she says, "Please be okay," in that voice I've never known how to argue with.</p><p>"I will.  I <i>am</i>," I insist, though I am in fact orchestrating my own demise.  Lucy's keychain has a Honda key on it that gleams as if it's not a filthy liar.  "How are you doing?"</p><p>"Oh, you'd be proud of me, I got up early, went for a walk, and came back and did the entire crossword puzzle in pen."</p><p>"That's great," I say, hearing everything she's not saying: <i>your father's waiting for your brother to stop by, I thought retiring meant I'd have more time on my hands, I swear I'll read the book you sent me this evening</i>.  "Smartypants," I tease, and Lucy stiffens like she's heard that word as a taunt too many times to believe it could be affectionate. Lucy's big eyes, no rings around the irises to lock up the color, look up up up to fix on my face.  Somehow, the blue of them looks pearly rather than crystalline, expensive like the eggshell paint I put on my bedroom walls just last weekend.  I am obsessed with her and she's wandered into — is <i>living within</i> — grabbing distance.  "Have a good week."</p><p>"You too, my baby," my mother says, and when I disconnect the spell is broken and Lucinda, trying to feign sudden disinterest, turns away.  She has no idea how to play the Ignoring Game.  She should call my father for tips.</p><p>*</p><p>Jeanette is wearing an orange-and-bronze tent that I cannot imagine looking good on anybody on earth, but she seems pleased with what it expresses about her inner self.  I hope the satisfaction of wearing the uniform of a particularly deranged order of monks is enough to get her through this meeting.</p><p>Lucinda and I are notorious.  In less than a month of working cheek by jowl, we have clashed terribly enough that HR is less a last resort and more of a number to have on speed-dial.  Jeanette has a brand-new tic in her eye, courtesy of us.</p><p>"I thought I was glad to be still standing after the reorganization," Jeanette says in a ghostly whisper that seems to be how all the Gaminites choose to communicate their gossamer thoughts.  She stops being so airy-fairy to give me some blistering stinkeye, as if I and I alone am responsible for redundancies when two competitors merge.  "But my will to live slips through my fingers when I have to cope with the two of you."</p><p>"Oh, Jeanette, no," Lucinda says, the easiest mark of all time.  This is usually where she'd offer up some homemade cake, only I foiled her saccharine plans by not having flour or sugar in my pantry.</p><p>"Just tell me," Jeanette says, closing her eyes.  "You're <i>living together</i> now?  How?  Why?"</p><p>I gesture to Lucy to go ahead, since she and Jeanette evidently connect on a spiritual level.  And I'm curious about how she's spun things in her mind.</p><p>"It's only temporary," she says, biting her lip, and my eyes are drawn there like magnets.  Her lipstick is the color of the devil's underpants.  I immediately picture her removing <i>my</i> underpants with those gleaming white teeth, drawing my cock into her red-velvet mouth with a sweet pink tongue.  These are good and wholesome thoughts to have when sitting across from the head of HR.</p><p>"Josh is just doing me a favor," Lucinda lies blithely.  "We're friends."  I cannot believe how smoothly the lies flow from her mouth.  I would never call her a friend, not when she's my nemesis, my equal and opposite number, my kindling, my fantasy.  "My lease was up, my plans to move in with Val fell through" — who the <i>fuck</i> is <i>Val</i> and why am I suddenly picturing Lucy shacking up with Val Kilmer? — "and I had all my stuff in my car when it died.  Again."  Lucy smiles and shrugs like her car's perfidy is only to be expected.  To be fair, it is.  And yet no one has thought that maybe paying her what she's worth would allow her to buy something reliable.</p><p>Jeanette is refusing to be drawn into the story.  She crosses her arms over her chest, jingling like she's got bells attached somewhere I do not want to know about.  "And Mr. Templeman was the person you called?"</p><p>Lucy can lie by omission as well as by commission, which is good to know now that I've idiotically let her into my home; my spare key is on her stupid Smurf keychain.  "Oh, Josh <i>insisted</i> that I stay with him until I can find a place of my own!"  I don't come across as an ogre in this version, which is surprising, but she must be too eager to disguise her own pathos to come up with something that would make me blush.  What really happened was that on Friday morning, I'd broken the news to all of the employees who'd been made redundant by the merger, because sure as shit Bexley wasn't going to do it, and I thought it would be better coming from someone who wasn't a millionaire.  I knew that it would be a nasty shock, even to people who knew what mergers meant, <i>because</i> our merger had gone so well, and I'd done my best to get decent severance packages for them.</p><p>There's no way to make that kind of news less awful.  There were tears and recriminations and they'd all cleared out by noon, most of them taken out to lunch by colleagues who were struggling with survivors' guilt.  I came back from my lunchtime run at 2:30 to see Lucy crying at her desk, alone on the tenth floor because of course our CEOs had left early.  For a wild moment in which my heart tried to vomit itself out of my body, I was sure she was going to tender her resignation, make some futile gesture of solidarity with the employees who'd been sacked; I would have said anything to get her to stay.</p><p>It took a lot of coaxing and a great deal of patience, but Lucy had looked at me with those wet, shining eyes and told me that her whole life was packed up in her car and that she not only had nowhere to go but the car itself wouldn't start.  She cried about metaphors and I was trying to think about what I could possibly do to make even one fraction of her life better when she wiped her pearly eyes and admitted, "I wish we were friends."</p><p>I know a cue when I hear one.  I took her downstairs, transferred three suitcases and unending boxes of books from her car to mine, and brought her home.</p><p>Jeanette heaves a sigh dredged up from her toes.  "I have the paperwork for co-workers entering into a romantic and/or sexual relationship on my desk," she informs us, as if Lucy's not been careful to put all the platonic words, every single one of them, into her explanation.  I look up at Jeanette, irritated, to find that she's studying my expression like she's Sherlock Fucking Holmes.</p><p>"That is not the context in which Lucinda and I are cohabitating," I tell her, prim as Miss Manners, while my lust for Lucy rages unabated.  If Lucinda were in my bed, limbs spread like petals so that I could have my way with her . . . we wouldn't come back to work for weeks, too intent on each other to come up for air, let alone Jeanette's poorly photocopied forms.</p><p>*</p><p>I return from the gym to find my kitchen a disaster zone; Lucy has evidently gone to the market while I've been doing my level best to exorcise all thoughts of her, and is baking up a storm.  </p><p>There is lemon juice everywhere.  Lucinda must have the kung-fu grip, because I can see from their pitiably denuded and misshapen rinds that she rolled those lemons viciously, zested them thoroughly, and squeezed the shit out of them, even though the counter's a bit too high for her to work comfortably.  Maybe she can't see the drops of juice all over my gleaming granite countertop.  I could get her a little step stool.  I could kneel down and let her use me.  She could put her round little heels in my hands and I could dip my head down just far enough to get it under the hem of her ruby dress and scrape my teeth gently along her soft thighs.</p><p>Lucy very nearly mows me down trying to get to the fridge, and I need to get out of the way if I'm going to resist the urge to find out what her mouth tastes like.  I should go . . . read a book, watch a documentary, <i>something</i>.  There's a new Tana French at the top of the stack on my bedside table but I don't need hard-boiled Dublin detectives right now as much as a cozy mystery, Wimsey or Marple or Poirot; if I'm going to be sneaking peeks at Lucy, I need something I've read before that I can follow without effort.  But it hits me then that if she's baking, she'll be using the oven, which I need to make dinner.  It's odd to have someone else in the kitchen while I work, but soon enough I've got the spaghetti squash roasting and the tomato sauce gently simmering.  Lucy keeps sneaking peeks over at the pot and trying to inhale the garlic.</p><p>It's the garlic that's giving her the Horny Eyes, I tell myself.  It is an intensely satisfying aroma, after all.  But maybe that's not all there is to it, because I finally remember that I'm stinking up the place and I need my post-gym shower, and for some reason decide that Lucinda needs to be apprised of my whereabouts at all times and those eyes of hers go diamond-sharp, lethal weapons, and she looks like she's thinking about fucking me solely as a means of making my subsequent murder all the more pleasurable for herself.  I can't string the words together to lodge any kind of protest.  The only sentence my mind is willing to shape is that she's more than welcome to join me in the shower even though she's got one of her own, and I just barely manage to keep my mouth shut.</p><p>*</p><p>I'm damp because I couldn't keep it together long enough to dry myself properly — life with Lucinda is pitfall after disaster after drama — and Lucy has finally changed out of the flirty red dress and is sitting at the table wearing a vine-green ribbed sleeveless top and red flannel shorts that look like she got them in the children's department.  She's got her laptop open and when I walk by to pull the squash out of the oven, she turns it to face me; she's looking at apartment listings.  I know how much she makes, and she's never going to find anything bigger than a shoebox in a safe neighborhood.</p><p>"Really?" I say.  "I thought we were friends."  I do not let myself stress the last, magic word or even approach air-quotes.</p><p>"Absolutely!" she chirps, lying like a rug though Jeanette can't hear a word of this.  "Just reassuring you, <i>friend</i>, that I'll be out of your hair as soon as possible."  Those dramatic eyes cut to my hair, and I knew I should have dried it properly and not let it go all curly, because only one person currently in the apartment can pull off curls, and it isn't me.  Lucy must sense my internal acknowledgment of weakness, because she comes to stand near me and laugh.  "Whoa, I didn't realize that poor squash was your bitter enemy," she says, and perhaps I have been forking out its innards with a viciously efficient hand.  She says it like the idea of cracking <i>her</i> open and feasting on the softness within could never have crossed my mind.</p><p>The first inkling I have that she's taken over the kitchen as well as my spare bedroom and bathroom comes when she reaches into a drawer to pull out oven mitts printed with roses.  They come nearly up to her elbows when she pulls them on to retrieve whatever it was that she was baking.  It's a pan of lemon bars, I realize when she's shaking powdered sugar over the top with a heavy hand. "To say thank you," she says, sounding almost shy.  There's enough white in the air that it looks like she was caught in a blizzard.  "You like lemon, right?"</p><p>Unless she deduced that from a <i>cough drop</i>, I have no idea how she guessed that.  But I can't eat a single bite of those lemon bars; I'd be on the treadmill forever, trying to work each rich mouthful off my body.  "Yes," I say, "I do."</p><p>*</p><p>There are no leftovers from dinner; Lucinda surprised us both by inhaling down seconds, even as she was complaining that the squash wasn't "real carbs."  We're finishing up the dishes — I'm doing a cursory scrub and handing things to her so she can arrange them in the dishwasher because she really would need a step stool to wash the dishes by hand — and I'm trying to figure out how to decline the dessert without hurting her feelings when there's an unfamiliar chime.  Lucy brightens and looks over at her laptop, which she'd moved to the counter once dinner was on the table.</p><p>I'm instantly forgotten as she opens Skype and sees two people who can only be her parents; I can't work out if being ignored is better or worse than being treated as the thorn in her side.  Still, no reason I can't make my presence known.  Lucy is so small that she's got the screen tilted low enough that when I come up behind her I only show up from the belly down.  Both of her parents stop squealing their delight at seeing her — understandable, but do they really call her <i>Smurfette</i> when they gave her a name as lovely as Lucinda? — when they see me looming.</p><p>"Is that Val's boyfriend?" Lucy's dad asks.  So, probably not Val Kilmer under discussion after all; context clues are vital.  Lucy heaves a sigh and tips her head back, not enough to make upside-down eye contact with me, but just enough that a few of the curls escaping from the overstuffed bun on top of her head brush my belly.  It is a delicious sensation.  I want to throw her over my shoulder and bolt into my bedroom with my treasure.</p><p>"No," she says, enunciating very crisply all of a sudden, all Professor Henry Higgins.  "This is Joshua.  Templeman."</p><p>I was wondering when she'd get back around to calling me a monster, since she didn't this morning, though that was probably just to try to spare Jeanette an aneurism or two; all it takes, apparently, is for her to bite out the six syllables of my name.  Seven, if she threw in my middle name but she's just not as assiduous a researcher as I am, that Lucinda Elizabeth Hutton.</p><p>Her dad puffs up immediately, breathing fire.  "From work?  Listen here, Jehosephat," he says before his wife gets a restraining hand on his arm and tugs it so he falls silent.</p><p><i>Jehosephat</i> aside, I remind myself, this is what a good dad looks like, someone automatically on his kid's side, ready to take on anybody for her sake.  And her mom?  Her mom looks even smarter, a grown-up version of Lucinda, the same determined chin and luxuriant black curls.  It makes no sense to me that Lucy was all alone on Friday after the mysterious Val broke her heart, and I'm glad that at least she got the parents she deserves, even if friends have been inexplicably thin on the ground.</p><p>"Joshua, I'm Annie.  This is Nigel.  It's nice to meet you," Lucy's mother says, beaming out at me from the screen.  She's not wearing lipstick, but there is something exactly that same satanic red on her lap.  It's a basket of lushly ripe strawberries, the basket bearing a ribbon that says <i>Sky Diamond Strawberries</i> just like the logo on Lucy's little shorts, and I've heard the Beatles often enough, when cooking with my mother, to piece it all together.</p><p>"And you," I say, squatting down so Annie can see my face.  Her smile stays just the same, and it feels like I've aced a test I didn't know was coming.  Spending all my free time at the gym means that I can stay balanced on the balls of my feet and even be comfortable holding the position; if I wanted to risk having my nose broken, I'd hook my chin over Lucy's soft little bare shoulder and keep the conversation going.</p><p>"What's going on?" Nigel asks.  "Where's Val?"</p><p>I can see from the screen that Lucy's chewing the inside of her cheek.  I'm so close I can smell her skin, the tender fragrant place just behind her ear.  "There was a layoff at work," she finally says, "and Val was let go."  Val was someone we'd worked with?  Had to be a Gaminite, since I knew all the Bexley employees by name at least.  "And she thought I must have known that she was getting laid off, since I'm on the top floor, and she wouldn't believe me when I said I didn't, and so moving in together was out of the question."  Her words — even more than her voice, not exactly level — surprise me; she's not taking the opportunity to point out that I was the one to rip out the hearts of the newly unemployed and dance on them in my hobnail boots.</p><p>"Silly cow," Nigel says heatedly, while Annie looks like she yearns to hold Lucy through the screen somehow.  The two of them are pressed up close together and I can tell that they're both tactile, that Lucy would have grown up getting hugged and kissed all the time, and since I've known her I've seen no one even hold her hand.  "And where does Jebediah come into the story?"  He's still suspicious.  I would be too, if my pipsqueak of a daughter, all alone in the big city, were suddenly answering video calls from the lair of her oversized nemesis.</p><p>"When Josh heard I had nowhere to live, he said I should just take his spare bedroom.  I've got my own bathroom, too, and we carpool, so it's all worked out great!"  She's trying so hard to keep them from worrying.</p><p>"It's been three days," Nigel points out, "and two of those were a weekend."</p><p>Annie nudges him.  "Lickety-split," she says, grinning, and he turns to her and lights up like he can't help reflecting her happiness.</p><p>"What's lickety-split?" I ask.</p><p>"Ask Lucy," Annie says, and I hear Lucinda choke, so it must be good.  "You must still have lots of unpacking and organizing to do, and it's a work night.  Don't want to keep you up too late.  Thank you, Joshua.  Sweet dreams, Smurfette."  There's some dithering while she and Nigel try to work out how to disconnect the call but soon enough the screen is a black blank.</p><p>"Well," I ask Lucy as I rise to stand, "are you going to spill?"</p><p>Oh, she's going to try to brazen it out.  Too bad the strawberry flush on her cheeks and ears gives her away.  Too bad her mother seems to like me.  "Spill what?"  She raises one eyebrow challengingly at me, apparently still laboring under the delusion that I cannot pull off that trick.  "There's no game here, you weirdo."</p><p>"Fine, keep your secrets, Shortcake," I say, walking away and closing my bedroom door behind me.  There <i>is</i> a game afoot — the Courting Game — and I always play to win.</p>
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